White Mammoth
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Ever get that chill when you're alone in the dark? After Dark is a brand new horror podcast that fully embodies that feeling with a soothing female narrator that draws you in before leading you into the shadows. Each week, After Dark tells some of the most terrifying tales that feel a little too real. The kind that make you glance over your shoulder or leave a light on at night. If you're already hooked on Dr. No Sleep, you'll feel right at home with After Dark.

Well, if home had shadows that whispered back. Tune in to After Dark today by clicking the link in the episode description. Just one warning, don't listen alone. We left home on a crisp November morning without so much as a goodbye selfie with mom and dad.

Two grown twin brothers on two brand new bikes. Suzuki DRZ 400s. With our parents' credit card in my wallet and a stack of paper atlases in Samir's backpack. That was a big part of the plan. No GPS, no smartphones. Just Samir and me and the motorcycles on the open road.

It was meant to be a grand adventure, a truly epic gap year where we explored the world one hostel at a time, driving through country after country. We would conquer the globe, side by side, the journey I deserve. The trip was meant to be life-changing, to help bring out the real me, and I guess, in a way, it did. It is May now, six months since we departed home.

It feels longer, like whole years have slipped away and left me older, more broken, more alone. Spring will turn to summer, but it doesn't feel like it. It's freezing here. I had thought it was cold that November morning back in Boston, but up here, in the Arctic Circle, the temperature never gets above freezing. It chills my bones from the inside out.

The truck's heater is on, but whatever warmth it's coughing out, it doesn't reach me in the back seat. I can see my breath in the air. What was it Samir used to call that when we were kids? Dragon's breath. Funny. I wish he was with me now, in this stinking truck as it speeds along the tundra. Actually, I wish neither of us were here in Russia. I wish we had never left home. I wish a lot of things. There are four other men in the truck with me.

The driver is a local named Vanya. His hair is grey and so is his skin, as grey as the landscape outside. He looks like he belongs in the tundra. I don't know the name of the man in the passenger seat beside Vanya. Everyone just calls him "the Colonel". He's really old, like 80. He said he's from South Africa and that he used to be a hunter. Back before his government changed and people like him were villainized and forced out of work.

I'm sandwiched in the backseat between the other two guys, who haven't spoken much. I don't think they know English, they're both Russian. They look about my age, 19 or 20, and they're both named Misha. How confusing is that? The colonel has been napping against the window, but now he wakes up with a snort and sits up. "Are we almost there?" he asks, yawning. Vanya coughs a laugh.

"No, no, friend. Many hours yet. Big tundra. Big and empty and cold as shit, no? Go back to sleep." The colonel grunts and turns on the radio. The speakers pop and the grating screech of static fills the truck. Vanya curses and switches it off. "No radio here, I tell you. Too far from towers. No nothing here." The colonel shrugs. He turns around in his seat, looking at us in the back. He catches my eye.

You are new, boy. I have worked with Misha and Misha before. But not you. Who are you, I wonder? I clear my throat. My name's Zane, sir. You guys picked me up yesterday. In Norilska, remember? You said I would get a hundred thousand rubles for a few days work.

"Oh, why so greedy?" asks the Colonel, and Vanya laughs. "I need that money," I say. "I need that money to get me and my... to get home." "Where's home?" "Boston. That's in America." Vanya chuckles and imitates my voice. "That's in America! We know where is Boston. We are smart men. Only smart men can do job like this. Very hot job. Dangerous." That confuses me.

"I thought we were just looking for mammoth bones. That doesn't sound very dangerous." The Colonel grins. "Do you know why we are looking for mammoth bones?" I shrug. "To sell them?" "Well, yes. Why are they valuable?" "I don't know. Because they're really old?" The Colonel's smile widens, revealing yellow teeth. "I am really old. Do you think I am valuable?" Vanya laughs.

The Colonel leans over the seat toward me. I can smell vodka and rot on his breath. "The ivory," he says, speaking in a reverent whisper, and there is a glint in his dark eyes, a wicked gleam, predatory and alert. "The ivory is worth more than gold to the right collector." I hold my breath and nod. He turns and settles back against the door. "It used to be so easy," the Colonel groans.

Tracking the great brutes through the savannah, bringing them down. "Aang!" He slams a fist against the dashboard and I jump. "Back then," the colonel continues, "my trucks were shiny and new. Not like this garbage. My passengers were businessmen from New York, Moscow, Shanghai. They paid good money."

Real money for the chance to pull the trigger. They wanted the photograph after. Them in their Gucci boots, standing beside the huge corpse, holding up the severed tail. I would cut the tails off, of course. Makes a very satisfying sound, chopping the tail off an elephant. I'll take your word for it, I say. The colonel sighs.

No hell, insists Vanya. In hell are devils. No devils here.

"No nothing here." They go quiet for a while. I exhale, more dragon's breath, and gaze out the filthy window. The tundra is flat, foggy, and bleached in cold sunlight. I glance down at my wrist to check the time, forgetting that my watch is gone, just like my bike, my wallet, and everything else the police took from me after the incident. I will never see that watch again. Or my motorcycle.

Some corrupt cops kid is probably racing it through the streets by now. But if I can just pay the rest of the bribe, I can get my passport back. They've promised me that. I can get my documents and get out of here, away from these people. I can get back home and pretend that none of this ever happened. Hours pass. I'm feeling nauseous when Vanya finally engages the truck's screaming brakes, and we slide to a stop. We're in the middle of nowhere.

"Need to take piss," Vanya grunts. He goes to open the door, but the latch is frozen shut. Cursing in Russian, he slams his shoulder against the door. It opens with a crunch and he climbs out. The Colonel slides across the seat and follows Vanya outside. I'm kicked and jostled as Misha and Misha climb over the seats and out of the truck. I follow, clumsily, sliding down to the ground, past the truck's massive tires wrapped in chains.

My boots slip on ice, and I almost fall on my face. I look around. We're not on a road anymore. I guess there are no roads this far north. And why should there be? There's nowhere to go and nothing to see. The rocky ground is covered in lichen and every shade of grey. The horizon is hidden in fog. So as I turn in place, I get the dizzying feeling that we're on an island in the middle of the endless, motionless sea.

Vanya coughs, spits, and unzips his pants to let loose a hissing stream of urine beside the truck. Beside me, one of the Misha's lights a cigarette. The other Misha takes a few steps into the fog, looking around. "We're almost there," he announces. And it takes me a minute to register that he's speaking in English. "Twenty more miles. To north. That's where we'll find them." As he walks back to the truck, I come alongside him.

"I assumed you only spoke Russian," I say to him. He rolls his eyes. "What is it you Americans say about assumptions? An ass out of you and an ass out of me, yes?" "Sorry," I mutter. "I just figured." "I speak five languages," he tells me. "And until recently, I was at university in London pursuing a PhD in paleoclimatology. Holy shit!" I say with a chuckle. "What are you doing out here?" If you don't mind me asking.

He shrugs. "Same as you. I need the money." "Gotcha." A sudden breeze moves through the fog around us, undulating the mist in waves. A chill goes up my back. I lean closer to Misha. "Still, people like you and me, we don't belong here. With these guys." "These guys?" He stops and turns to me. There's no humor or friendliness on his face. "Whatever it is you have done to find yourself in this place, on this day,

It means you deserve to be here. Same as me, same as them. We are these guys. You understand? I open my mouth to speak. We can't find the words. It is the way of the universe, Misha explains. Not karma. Not that spiritual mumbo-jumbo bullshit. Entropy. The cosmic balance of energy. A reaction to every action. I think I get it, I manage to say.

"Do you?" He is taller than me and leans down so that our reddened noses almost touch. "Do you want to know my sin? Or do you think I am some nice college boy with a bright future? Do you want to hear about who I found in my bed? After a night of partying? About what I did to that poor girl?" I shake my head and try to close my eyes. I can't even blink. It's like the air has frozen my eyelids in place.

"My choices led me here," Misha tells me, laying his gloved hands on my shoulders. "I used to be proud of my work. I have a certain knack, you see, for finding things on satellite images that others cannot. But when I make a new discovery now, instead of contacting the scientific community, I call men like Vanya, the Colonel. I tell them where to find the remains. Look on the back of the truck. Do you see that equipment?

"That is the saw they use to cut the mammoths apart. They take the tusks and leave the bodies to rot. They have no regard for these noble creatures. They are poachers, butchers, mercenaries. But can I judge them? No, because I am one of them." His hands tighten their grip on my shoulders. He leans into my ear and whispers, "I am one of them. And so you."

As we wait our turn to climb back into the truck, I see the Colonel struggling to make it up the ladder. Vanya gives him a boost, and as the old man clambers up, his coat shifts to the side, and I see a flash of metal against his thigh. He has a pistol. After another half hour of driving, the truck slows and lurches to a stop. We climb out again. The landscape looks the same to me, except that it's hillier.

The other men are excited, pulling out maps and arguing in Russian. After a few minutes, Vanya climbs onto the back of the truck and starts untying equipment. I am handed two pickaxes, a shovel, and an insanely heavy backpack. Misha the scientist leads the way, followed by a whistling Vanya, who pulls a portable generator on a cart. The colonel follows from behind.

Finally, I stumble along beside the other Misha, who carries a circular saw the size of a car tire. "Can't we all use carts?" I grunt, but they ignore me. We walk for a minute, Misha pausing now and again to look over his map and adjust the path, then we start to climb a hill. It's not very steep, but with my heavy load and the aching cold in my muscles, I struggle to take each step.

"You see those stones there and there?" Misha calls from the front of the group, pointing to spots around us. "Lateral Marines! They were left behind from the glacier that used to be here. For one hundred thousand years, the ice sheet dominated this land. And now, we humans have killed it in a few decades. Just like your elephants, eh, Colonel?" The Colonel barks a laugh. "The Toa is good for business!" shouts Vanya. "Reveals mammoth, no?"

"Now, can we find ivory? What good is glacier? Bah! Better this way! Better for our pocketbooks!" Misha admits. "Here! It should be right! Here!" He comes to a stop ahead of us. On the crest of the hill, he drops his pack. "What the hell?" I hear Misha mutter. "Wrong is wrong?" asks Vanya, letting go of the generator cart and stomping up beside Misha. The rest of us set down our gear and follow them.

I'm out of breath when I reach the top, clutching at a stitch in my side. I stand beside the kernel and squint through the haze at the scene before us, trying to make sense of it. The ground slopes down and then up in a bowl-shaped depression. The natural pit isn't very big, but it stands out against the landscape. It's base, carpeted in green lichen and dusted with white frost. At the bottom of the pit, there's a group of four strange gray shapes,

There are blank spaces, wonky ovals of flat, gray rock, without lichen. It looks like… like there had been four large objects inside the pit, but they've been removed. "I don't understand," says Misha, checking his map again. "They were here. Four of them. Too large, too small. A family. A rare find. What happened?" "I will tell you what," grunts Vanya, pointing a finger at Misha.

"You sell location to other team! You cheat us!" "No!" insists Misha, throwing his hands up. "I swear, I told no one else. Besides, there are no bodies. No one came here to take the ivory." The colonel crosses his arms, looking into the pit. "Perhaps scientists came and took them away." Misha shakes his head. "We would see signs. Tire tracks, footprints.

"It's a lot of work to take away one mammoth, much less four." "Then you make mistake!" shouts Vanya, shaking a fist in Misha's face. "You read satellite image wrong. No mammoth here. You waste our time. Look down there! Look! They were here!" Vanya spits on the ground at Misha's feet, then turns and begins to make his way into the pit to investigate.

He slips in the frost, catching himself and cursing in Russian. When he reaches the bottom, he crouches. "Well?" calls down the colonel. "What do you say, Vanya?" "They do look like red shape!" Vanya shouts back. "Also, there are maggots! Yes, many white maggots on ground! Maybe bugs eat mammoth?" Misha shakes his head. "No way!"

The hides are tough and the bones are solid. Besides, it is too cold for any bugs up here. You are mistaken." "I am no mistaken. Come, see! Many white maggots on ground!" Misha curses under his breath and takes a step forward. "Help me down, too," says the colonel. "I want to say…" As Misha and the old man move into the pit, I exchange a look with the other Misha. We both shrug, then follow them down.

I slip right away. I fall on my ass and slide to the bottom beside Vanya. He laughs, but helps me up. I dust myself off and look around. He's right. There are fat worms, white as snow, wriggling across the rocks. Dozens, maybe hundreds. The sight turns my stomach. What the hell? mutters Misha, reaching the bottom with the Colonel. They look like some sort of leech, but they shouldn't be here unless...

Unless they've been frozen for a very, very long time. The warming climate has, you know, woken them up. Vanya bends and picks up one of the leeches between two gloved fingers. He holds it out. Hungry little bitch, he says. We all watch as the creature struggles to get free. Its body is only a few inches long, slimy, and segmented.

Its back end tapers to a stinger-like tail. At its front end, I can see a tiny, circular mouth with a ring of black teeth, like minuscule needles. "Gross!" I say, suppressing my gag reflex. Vanya laughs again, but the leech twists madly, and he loses his grip on it. It falls to the ground at his feet.

The rest of us spring backward as Vanya raises a foot and slams his boot onto the leech with a thud. He grinds his boot on the rock, then moves his foot aside. "There is it!" Vanya asks. "I stomp it!" Tomping on his other foot to balance, he bends his knee and twists his foot to look at the bottom of his boot. We all see the white leech there, still whole and squirming, its mouth suckered to the rubber sole. "Tough little bastard," says the colonel.

Vanya reaches to pull it off, but as his glove comes in contact with the leech, its body writhes and slips into the hole it has bitten.

Vanya screams and falls backward. There is a flash of white as the leech's tail disappears into the hole and a small spray of blood mists the air. "He's in foot! He's in foot! Oh God!" Vanya screams, grabbing his foot in both hands. "Help get off boot! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!" Misha and I fall to our knees next to Vanya. I fumble with the laces of the boot. The knot is frosted tight and it's impossible to get a grip with my gloves on.

Misha grabs the heel of the boot and pulls until his face is red. The boot slips free, pulling off the sock with it. Misha collapses backward, holding the boot and panting. Vanya is screaming, great sobs of pain and terror as he reaches with trembling hands toward his exposed foot.

I stare at the foot, pale and calloused, with bunched toes and yellow nails. But my eyes can't help but follow the swollen shape of the leech beneath the skin, wriggling across the top of the foot, around the ankle, now crawling across the heel. Oh, but... moans Vanya. There is a squelching sound, and the skin of the heel turns purple. It's inside! screams Vanya. I feel it's chewing on bones!

"Help!" Suddenly, the foot jerks and twitches. It snaps backward, kicking Vanya's shin, then jerks forward, toes splaying out as bones and tendons stretch and snap. Vanya chokes on his scream, his mouth frozen open, all the color draining from his cheeks. "No, no, no!" he moans, and he reaches down to grab the foot and put the toes back in place.

The leg jerks and twists, the knee snapping sideways, and Vanya's own foot kicks out, striking him in the face. He is thrown onto his back, blood squirting from his broken nose. "Do something!" I shout at the others, but they're all staring at Vanya too, speechless. "Um, uh, I don't know," mumbles Misha the scientist. "The saw! Maybe if we take off the foot, I will get the saw." He turns and starts running up the hill,

The other Misha backs away, lips trembling, and sits, hugging his knees, his gaze fixed on the form of Vanya in the center of the pit. Vanya's foot is still moving, twitching, gripping at the ground with the splayed toes. "Please, help!" Vanya moans, looking up into the eyes of the Colonel standing over him. The Colonel doesn't answer. He reaches to his waist, pulls out his pistol, and shoots Vanya in the forehead. I freeze in place,

The gunshot doesn't echo. It's just a single pop followed by a heavy silence. "We must go," says the Colonel. His voice is flat and emotionless. "You boy, help me up there." I realize he's talking to me. My gaze is locked on Vanya's body. One of his eyes is still open, beneath his head. The growing pool of blood is already starting to freeze. Pink crystals on the edge of a crimson puddle, and the foot

It's still moving, trying to drag the body away. We must go! The colonel shouts. The Misha, sitting on the ground, rises to his feet. But even as he stands, I can see that something is wrong. His face is all screwed up, his mouth clenched, his eyes squinted shut as if in pain. Colonel! I say. Misha, he's...

We both look at the young man, who glances down at his own legs, then twists to try and look behind him. On the back of his legs, his thighs, we can see the tails of a dozen wriggling leeches and they burrow their way inside of him. He looks up at us, a silent plea on his pale face. I look down at my feet as the colonel raises his pistol. Two shots ring out.

From the corner of my vision, I see Misha fall forward onto his knees, then tip sideways onto the ground. Something cold touches my cheek. I turn and see the barrel of the gun aimed between my eyes. Before I can scream or fight or react at all, the Colonel shouts, "Check yourself, now!" I scramble to feel and look at my boots, my pants, my coat, searching for any sign of the leeches.

"Nothing! There's nothing! I'm fine, see?" I say, the words spilling out of my mouth. He lowers the gun. "Help me climb!" I take him by the elbow, and we hurry up the slope. I plant my feet firmly with each step, my whole focus on not slipping, not falling and sliding back into the pit. As we reach the summit, the other Misha, the only Misha left, grabs me by the hand and helps us out.

"You okay?" Misha asks us. I nod, but the Colonel has already pushed his way between us and is marching toward the truck. We hurry after him, passing our fallen tools. The truck looms ahead of us in the fog. The Colonel breaks into a limping jog. "Let's hope the keys are in the ignition," he says, reaching the truck and climbing onto the ladder.

"We need..." The truck suddenly lurches, tires sliding sideways over the ground, and the Colonel is thrown backward. He lands with a grunt. "What the hell was that?!" I scream. The truck rumbles again, shaking, chains and tools rattling. "I think... something..." I start to say, but the words jam in my throat. I lean forward into a crouch, bending to look under the truck.

Sideways in my vision, I see a hulking shape on the other side. A mass of gray. There is a thunderous boom of crunching metal and shattering glass as I look up to see the truck tilting onto its side. Falling. Falling right on top of me. Hands grab me by the shoulders and yank me backward as the truck tips over, spitting up a cloud of dust and wind. I turn and see Misha panting, still clinging to my coat.

"Thanks," I manage to say, before the truck lurches again. The Colonel rises to his feet. His pistol is still in his right hand. There is blood dripping from a cut on his cheek. "Stand up, boys," he says, motioning with the gun. "Get behind me. Get behind the old Colonel." Misha helps me up. My whole body is shaking. I can barely control my legs.

We stand side by side with the Colonel in front of us and peer past him at the great shape making its way around the toppled truck. It moves slowly, deliberately, one huge foot at a time, each step shaking the very ground as it emerges from behind the truck and comes fully into view. The Colonel raises his pistol. "You!" says the Colonel. "Are one ugly son of a bitch!" He fires. Nothing happens.

The creature continues slowly forward, its hulking shoulders rocking back and forth. We can hear its breathing now, labored, wheezing, like the squeaking of a rusty door. The Colonel shoots it again. This time it reacts, coming to a stop just before him.

Part of the creature raises up and hangs for a moment in the air, silhouetted like a fat snake. Then it swings down with horrible speed and swipes the Colonel off his feet, sideways into the truck. His body smashes against the hull and slumps to the ground in a bloody heap, but the Colonel is still alive, moaning, and we see him reaching out a shaking hand toward us, reaching out for help. I don't move. Misha doesn't move.

We stand and watch as the creature moves to position its giant head, with its two giant tusks above the kernel. It bows its head, bringing the tip of one tusk to rest against the small of his back. He curses and tries to crawl forward, but the tusk pins him down, pushing further into his coat, his skin, muscle, bone, and organs. It isn't fast, like the swing of its trunk. It's slow, very slow.

There's a gradual pressure as the curved tooth presses down, down, down through the body with a long crunch. The Colonel opens his mouth to scream, but blood geysers out and splashes across the ground. Then he is still. I look from the Colonel's body up the length of the ancient tusk, up into the leathery, emaciated, skull-like face of the resurrected beast.

The surface of its whole body seems to writhe with a carpet of living fur. And I realize what I'm looking at. A colony of the leeches. Thousands of the slimy creatures coating the mammoth. Misha taps me on the shoulder. "We have to go," he mumbles, tugging on my sleeve. I stumble backward, unable to tear my eyes off it.

Misha darts forward, grabs the pistol where the Colonel dropped it. Running back, he shoves me hard. I stumble, turn, and begin to run beside him. Into the fog, into the heart of that endless nothing. Hours pass in a blur. Cold air, my heart pounding in my chest. Misha mumbling beside me, sometimes babbling in Russian, sometimes giggling uncontrollably. I say nothing. I have forgotten how to speak.

All around us, the fog glows softly silver. The light never changes. Night never comes. I don't know when or why we finally decided to stop and rest. I only know that some long but unknowable amount of time later, I find myself opening my eyes. I'm lying on the cold stone. It has started to snow. Fat flakes swirl in the air above me. White against the white. They fall onto my skin.

cling to my eyelashes and blind me. I sit up, shivering. Misha is sitting beside me, cross-legged, still and silent like some mountain guru. The pistol lays in his lap. "Where are we?" I ask. He shrugs. "What time is it?" He shrugs again and says, "Maybe morning, maybe evening. Who knows?" I stand up, stretching my limbs. They're all pins and needles, but not from sleeping wrong.

I'm numb, I realize. My whole body is numb. Beyond cold, like my nerves have stopped working. "Are we going to die out here?" I hear myself ask. "Yes. Today." "What is the meaning of a word like 'today' in a place like this?" He finally opens his eyes and looks around. "I hate this place. Homo sapiens are not meant to be here. We evolved for life in the savannah.

"For warm sunshine, cool rain day and night, sun and moon, up here, it's all wrong, you know?" I nod. "It's the body's circadian rhythm," he continues. "Our brain doesn't know when to rest. All the neurochemicals build up and have nowhere to go. Then we start seeing things, hearing things, feeling things. It becomes hard to know the difference." "What difference?" I ask.

Between life and dreams, between this nightmare. He waves at the surrounding tundra. And the nightmare in here. He taps a gloved finger against his left temple. It wasn't a hallucination, I tell him. I saw it too. The beast. He sighs, and then his thin lips stretch into a smile. I was afraid you'd say that. I was so desperately hoping that my mind made it up. That would be so much easier to accept.

He looks down at the pistol in his lap. "There is only one bullet, I'm afraid. One bullet. And two of us." He weighs the weapon in his hand, head cocked to one side. "But perhaps… Yes, perhaps I was wrong about you." He looks up at me and grins. "Maybe you don't belong out here. Maybe you are not these guys." He picks up the gun by the barrel and holds it out for me to take. I stare down at the weapon.

This, gift of mercy. But I don't move. I close my eyes, inhale in the painfully icy air. Exhale, dragon's breath. I open my eyes and look at Misha. "I killed my brother." I tell him. His smile fades. I straighten up and stare into the blank wall of fog. It was my idea. The trip, the whole thing. Samir didn't want to do it, but I convinced him. See, I had this grand plan.

Drive up through New York to Toronto, book passage on a ship to Europe, and get a nice tan on the way over. Get laid a bunch in Portugal, Spain, France. Just keep going. Meet people, meet girls, have all these crazy experiences. I wanted to have this, this great story to tell when I got home. But none of it happened. Everything was bad. It was stressful. It was boring. The bikes kept breaking down. And we never got laid. Not even once.

By the time we got to Moscow, Samir, he wanted to quit. He wanted to sell the bikes and fly home. I got so mad when he said that. I told him he was being a whiny bitch. He told me he never wanted to go in the first place, that it was all my fault. He just made me so angry. The next day, well, the next day he was quiet. I was still so mad. We didn't say anything when we got on the bikes. Of course, we did get back on the road and continued the trip.

Because that's what I wanted. He always did what I wanted in the end. And I had this idea to go way north. I thought it would be cool to see the Arctic Circle. To see 24 hours of daylight. Can you believe that? Anyway, we started out driving on this road. This really big and straight and empty road. I was on the right. Samir was on the left. We were going maybe 90, just cruising. The truck...

One of those big rusty semis. It came toward us from the opposite direction. We saw it coming from miles off, just creeping along. And then, right as it passed us, I just... I don't know. I just swerved to the left. I swerved into Samir. And he lost control and the truck was there and... It was so fast. Crazy fast. Not even one second. Afterward, I found his helmet by the road. Well, I thought it was just his helmet. But when I picked it up, his...

Samir's head fell out. It landed in the mud at my feet. We're identical twins, did I tell you that? Seeing that face, my face, like that, it fucks with your head, you know what I mean? I look down at Misha. His bloodshot eyes stare into mine. He says nothing. Oh, and it turned out that the truck had a dash cam. I go on, speaking quickly now, the story spilling out of me.

Misha says, after several very long seconds. He grunts and pulls himself to his knees, then stands.

And in that case... He adjusts his hold on the pistol, shifting it to fit his own hand around the grip, one finger laid across the trigger guard. I will take this. I am going on a walk now. A very short walk. He turns and steps away into the mist. Don't leave me here alone, I say, but my voice is weak and the words barely come out. Misha vanishes into the fog.

I can hear his footsteps for a few seconds, crunching into the newly fallen snow. Then nothing. Then a distant sound. Snowflakes fall around me. All is silent. I curl back up on the frozen ground and close my eyes. I dream of thunder, a hollow rhythm, like a heartbeat. Slow, deliberate. When I wake again, I am not alone. I sit up, blinking sleep from my eyes and dusting snow off my chest.

The snow has stopped falling but it lies thick on the ground in a shining carpet. It's beautiful. I look up. A face looks back at me. The eye sockets are hollow, but points of white light shine out from both holes. The skin ripples with leeches. The trunk swings leisurely back and forth. One of the tusks is stained red. I turn my head. Another mammoth is on my left. Tiny. Not much taller than me. Another is on my right. A perfect twin of his sibling.

Their hides writhe with leeches and their eyes are empty. I hear a gentle squawk, like an old broken horn. Twisting, I see the female behind me, almost as large as the male, but without tusks. I take a deep breath and get to my feet.

As I rise up, the mammoths mimic my motion, leaning back onto their hind legs, rising up, up, up into the air to stand like rippling statues in the fog. I stand in the midst of this impossible family and look to the tusked patriarch. "Well, here I am," I say. I hold my hands out to either side, exposing my chest and nod at the bloodied tusk to show what I want, but the mammoth does not heed my desire.

It stands, watching me with its glowing eyes. Then slowly, it turns. It begins to trudge away, still on its hind legs, one great foot after the other. The children follow, rocking as they stomp in line after their father. Lastly marches the matriarch, her wide back glistening white as the snow on the ground. They trek across the tundra, out of sight, their footfalls booming in the air. They leave me.

They leave me with my pain, with the weight of it all like a crushing boulder in my mind. I sigh. I turn and take a step in the opposite direction of their path. I begin to walk into the mist, alone. The journey I deserve. Entropy. The way of the universe. I walk across that endless tundra, bathed in the cold. Fog-filtered light, waiting for the sun to set.